da esoccer bet： Jose Mourinho has built a career on achieving positive results in heavyweight away fixtures at any cost.
da fazobetai： If he can’t win the match, he’ll spoil it – so long as he’s not surrendering three points to a divisional rival on their patch. That’s as much due to the dynamics of the league format and consequently the title race as it is the potential psychological impact.
Whereas defeat to a top-flight table neighbour will inevitably reduce the confidence of his players, a gritty stalemate on the road can be painted as a victory, while victory itself at somewhere like Anfield or Stamford Bridge can push the squad to a new level of belief altogether. Mourinho is the Premier League’s reigning master of the big away days, largely because of his world-class ability to create an anti-climax by stealing points with pragmatic performances.
But since being appointed Manchester United manager at the start of last season, that intrinsic, career-defining weapon has been absent from the Mourinho arsenal. In fact, from the beginning of last season, United have claimed the joint-fewest points of the top six against the rest of the top six alongside Arsenal (although they’ve played two games more), leaving them second-bottom of the summit’s mini-league.
And the statistics make even grimmer reading away from home; in their five Premier League meetings on the road against top six rivals under Mourinho, United have claimed a mini-league-joint-lowest two points, conceded a joint-lowest eight goals and scored a lowest once – a 71st-minute consolation strike in a 2-1 defeat to Tottenham at the end of last season, two days after the title race had concluded.
Mourinho will take solace in the clean sheets that sealed points at Anfield and the Etihad Stadium, having always built his away performances against divisional rivals on defensive organisation first, but it’s a modest return for a club who expect to be challenging at the Premier League’s summit.
Of course, Manchester United appear a much-changed animal from last season. Their current league standing is enough evidence of that; second-placed on goal difference alone with 19 points, compared to sixth with just 13 this time last year when they’d already lost at home to Manchester City.
But the differences stem deeper than simply a strong start to the campaign; summer signings Nemanja Matic and Romelu Lukaku have significantly changed the balance and the emphasis of the team to something far more powerful, physical and dynamic. They’re almost purpose-built for the kind of away performances Mourinho’s become synonymous with – grinding down teams before hitting them on the counter.
But at this point in the season and ahead of the trip to Anfield on Saturday, we’re still awaiting the evidence to back that up. United are the only team yet to face another member of last term’s top six this season and the average final 2016/17 standing of the teams they’ve encountered thus far is 11th place.
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Likewise, their biggest challenges in that regard, seventh-placed Everton and eighth-placed Southampton, have both started the new campaign in porous and profligate form respectively. You can only play what’s in front of you, as the old cliché goes, but there is an argument to suggest United have flattered to deceive this term – or at the very least only performed to the level that should be expected of them in light of the opposition.
That’s what makes Saturday’s clash such a pivotal encounter in United’s season, aside from the inevitable emotion that comes with the Northwest derby. In direct contrast, no top-six team has taken more points off the rest of that mini-league since the start of last season than Liverpool and accordingly, no team member of the mini-league has taken more points at home – 14 from six games with eleven goals scored and only two conceded.
While Jurgen Klopp’s side continue to struggle home and away against the Premier League’s rank-and-file, Anfield becomes a near-impenetrable fortress when it hosts top-quality opposition. If Mourinho intends to re-announce himself as the Premier League’s master of big games on the road, Anfield is the perfect place to make that statement.
But we’ll learn something new about this United side and Mourinho’s opinion of it one way or another on Saturday. Last season, the infamously overhyped ‘Red Monday’ at Anfield produced one of the most laborious scoreless draws of the season in a show of incredible pragmatism from Mourinho, even by the Portuguese’s usual standards, distrusting his side to achieve a result without all eleven men behind the ball. The Red Devils produced just one shot on target and finished up with a mere 35% possession, but managed to snatch a point in an incredibly forgettable encounter.
The ultimate question ahead of the same fixture almost exactly a year later then, is quite simply; does this new-look United side have the quality to either take more risks going forward by leaving themselves more open at the back or find the goals needed on the counter-attack to win when set up as defensively as last time? Interlinked with that, to what extent does Mourinho view Liverpool as a threat this time around, and how much trust does the Portuguese now place in his team on the road against their top-six rivals?
That’s easily the biggest litmus test thus far of United’s title credentials; the top-six mini-league may only bear a slight resemblance to last season’s final standings, but it will likely be far more decisive this term with the gap between sixth and seventh expected to be greater. The eight points between United and Everton was hardly a chasm, but the majority of the top six have recruited considerably this summer and will expect to be in a league of their own above the rest of the division. The term six-pointer should have real resonance throughout 2017/18.
Consequentially, United’s performances on the road against the rest of the top six must improve. And with Liverpool amid a run of just one win in seven, Saturday is the perfect opportunity for Mourinho and United to show last season’s surprising weakness away from home won’t tie them down once again this year.